


I'll Set You Apart

by crossfirehurricane



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Grief/Mourning, Lyanna Dies, Rhaegar Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-03
Updated: 2014-04-03
Packaged: 2018-01-18 02:11:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1411120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossfirehurricane/pseuds/crossfirehurricane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rhaegar returns to King's Landing victorious; Lyanna Stark returns dead.</p><p>For Anonymous.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'll Set You Apart

**Author's Note:**

> I was asked by an anon to write a scenario where Rhaegar wins at the Trident, but loses Lyanna. I also needed to get out of my writer's block, and this was a great way to do so. Updates for my others fics are coming soon!
> 
> Titles from Coldplay's 'The Scientist'.

He hadn't been in love with her. At least, not at first. But he certainly wasn't _always_ in love with her. Not when he crowned her at Harrenhal, not when he wrote her, not when he took her maidenhead underneath Winterfell's heart tree, and not on the road to Dorne. That had all been business, just a negotiation and a sacrifice made for the benefit of the world. When he told her that, she had laughed and then traipsed around for a full day, calling herself a mother of a savior. She had thought it was a clever jape. Somehow, Rhaegar found that charming.

She was always full of surprising allures like this. The first that he noticed was her laugh, so loud and boisterous and so terribly unladylike, and yet more genuine than any he had ever heard. There was the way she brushed her hair, in three quick strokes before she tossed the brush down and continued on her way. Then of course, there was her strange ability to change between an excitable child and a woman grown. One moment she would be telling him a story about her brothers, light shining through her eyes, and the next she would be moving his hand to her breast and kissing him.

War had left him yearning for her. The Trident was a strenuous affair, with all its blood and bustle, resulting in Robert Baratheon falling face first into the stormy ford. Then, to return to Ser Jaime Lannister with the King's, his father's, blood on his sword was another matter that sent him into a battle of a smaller, more private scale. To see his children was perhaps the only joy he had felt since he left Lyanna pregnant with a child of her own in the Tower of Joy. Aegon was too little to make known his recognition, and Rhaenys was too little to understand why he had left at all. She had thrown her little arms around his neck and cried that she missed him, that he should never leave again, and asked if he'd like to see Balerion, papa, as he's grown so much?

Elia offered neither comfort nor scorn, just a tight purse of her lips and a cold glimmer in her eyes. He should have expected as much, as despite his informing of her of his decisions, his father had kept her hostage to quell Dornish tempers. That she had welcomed him at all was a surprise, proving that her grace had been unwavering. She had called him your majesty, and thus reminding him that he was indeed King. It was an unsettling reminder, though one he was raised to be prepared for. Still, since his departure from Dorne, Rhaegar had not been delivered a single ounce of warmth, and he sought for it in a certain Stark girl whose brother awaited a sentence in his dungeons, in a cell not far from Jaime Lannister's.

He had received a raven from Arthur by way of Prince's Pass. It announced the knights' departure from Dorne, with a healthy baby boy in tow. That last bit had been inserted so plainly that Rhaegar had to read it twice to be sure that what he read was true. In truth, it was a minor disappointment, as he had hoped for a girl, but the details of the prophecy had been unclear as it is, and thus a boy might have been just as plausible as a girl; it did mean, however, that his children's names would not mirror that of his famous ancestor's and his sister-wives, but it was just as well. Lyanna would have called it silly anyway.

Thus, he set to naming him Daemon, until Lyanna disagreed.

He thought much of her opinions as of late. Though he used to go to Elia for advice, he had found her hardly tolerating his presence since his return, and for good reason. Though he had alerted her of his plan from the start, of crowning Lyanna, of courting her and taking her and bedding her, he had, and though it brought him much shame, he had left her largely alone with his mad father who, according to Ser Jaime, had been a few lapses of judgement away from burning the Red Keep down. Elia's coldness was not unexpected, though it sent him longing for Lyanna further.

When he received word that the knights were but an hour away, he dwelled further on Lyanna's words in anticipation of actually hearing them. There were many matters he had postponed until her arrival. First, and perhaps closest to her familial heart, was the matter of her brother and the other rebels. He knew she would object to any and all punishment, urging mercy over justice. And perhaps he might be swayed to obey her, and to offer redemption to those to turned their cloaks to the kingdom. As for the Lannister boy, she might beg for the opposite, that justice be brought down upon a kingslayer- or perhaps not.

He positioned himself at the top of the stairs in front of the entrance to the Red Keep. It provided for perfect view of the gates though not a far ways beyond it out to the road down which his beloved and his most trusted men would travel down to see him.

Leading them on his broad brown stallion was Ser Gerold, tall and wide and grim-looking, as he always was. Behind him was Ser Arthur, then Ser Gerold, and a woman, carrying a babe in a sling across her chest. Rhaegar squinted to see that she had dark hair, darker than Lyanna's. He thought it was only a trick of the light, but when they came closer, he found it was not Lyanna at all, just some woman who seemed as lowly as a tavern wench. He looked back behind the four horses to see if Lyanna would come trailing after, galloping with all her might so she can rush into his arms.

Rhaegar licked his lips; he felt parched all of a sudden.

When Ser Gerold dismounted from his horse, Rhaegar found that something long had been wrapped in linen on the back of his horse, the strips tightly wound. Rhaegar furrowed his brows, and closed the gap between him and the knight.

"Your grace," Ser Gerold said with a bow.

"Where is she?" Rhaegar asked, ignoring formalities. She had not come through the gates yet; how long must he wait?

It was Ser Arthur who stepped forward, lifting the package of the back of Ser Gerold's horse. It bent in his arms, like a body.

A body.

With trembling hands, Rhaegar reached forward and folded back the sheet at one end. A face appeared; her face, yet not so. It was bloated and turning a sickly shade of purple, as if she had been beaten, but this was not bruising. It was death.

"What is the meaning of this?” he demanded, rage seeping into his blood. He could hardly grieve, he couldn't grieve, for she was supposed to come through those gates any moment any, any time. His eyes flitted there, to be sure.

“She died in childbed, your grace,” Ser Arthur informed him gravely. “She lost too much blood for the maester to treat her.”

He looked back to that peaceful, bloated face, so unlike that of his lady love’s. With trembling hands he touched her hair, feeling the curls that were once soft and thick turn brittle, breakable under his fingers.

“Why wasn’t I informed of this?” Rhaegar asks in fury, in sorrow. His Lyanna, the sweet wanton girl who enjoyed riding and swordplay was so full of life when he had left her. She had moaned beneath him and breathed his name in his ear, her pale cheeks flushed red, eyes bright with delight and just the merest hint of mourning. _”Come back to me,”_ she had told him then, moving his hand to the bump on her belly. _”Do not leave me alone.”_ He had kissed her and swore he’d return, the first truth he had said in a while.

“Consider this punishment, your grace,” Arthur answered plainly, a different type of hurt in his eyes. Rhaegar could not help but sneer.

“Punishment?” he asked incredulously. “Punishment for what, pray tell?” For lying to her at the start? For loving her in the end? For leaving Elia, leaving his children?

“For this war,” he replied. “For hurting her.”

Hurting her? How did he hurt her? By the gods, he _protected_ her, kept away from the war and the knowledge of her dead father and brother, and the danger her remaining family was in. She slept in his arms in bliss, not worry. He didn’t want her to worry.

“Ser Arthur,” he tried to sound cruel but his voice quivered. “What you have done can be considered treason. I can have you—“ Rhaegar paused, looking back down to Lyanna, purple lips parted.

“Have me what, your grace?” Arthur asked. “Do what you like with me. I care not.” He then unceremoniously dropped her limp body into his arms, before walking past him and inside the keep. She felt heavy in his arms, heavier than he remembered, but perhaps that was only because her thin arms weren’t wrapped around his neck, but fell limp to her sides, and her head wasn’t nestled beneath his chin, but was tilted back, rolling like a babe’s.

When Ser Gerold approached him, he finds he can hold her no longer. Not for weight or disgust, but fear, anger, and sorrow, for her face was still as ice and her eyes would not look up at him with love. He eases her slowly into Ser Gerold’s arms, then looks away.

“Take her to the sept,” he commands softly. “Lay her on an altar. Have the Silent Sisters tend to her, but do not have her buried. Only prepared.”

Ser Gerold nods. “As you wish, your grace.” He goes inside, leaving Ser Oswell, He only gave a bow and mumbled an apology before heading indoors as well. Now the only one left before him was the woman with the dark hair holding a babe to her breast.

 _My son,_ Rhaegar remembered, though now he only thought of Lyanna. He motions for the woman to step closer, and she obeys, their arms touching when she shows him the child.

Looking at him pains him. The babe had skin as white as snow, a tuft of dark brown hair, and eyes of steel: grey, cold, understanding. He was his mother’s child certainly, but more than that too. He was the spitting image of her.

“I…” Rhaegar tries to speak, looking down at this small wolf child. He reached a hand out to touch him, but finds it moving to his own face, covering it. “I cannot…”

Cannot look at him, cannot bear to touch him.

“You ought to name ‘im, your grace,” the woman advises him in a Dornish lilt. “A child without a name is an unlucky one.”

“I cannot…”

Cannot name him, cannot find an attachment with his own child.

“Please, take him inside,” he finds himself mumbling instead, dragging his hand over his face. The child stared at him with those grey, grey eyes, eyes that looked just like his mother’s, bright, wide, trusting.

The woman nods. “The name’s Wylla, your grace. I’ve been nursing him.”

Rhaegar waves an uncaring hand. What did it matter? The Mother herself could be nursing him and Rhaegar would not care. Neither of them were who he wanted presenting his child to him. He looked back to the gates, and hope for another useless second that she would come through those gates, laughing astride her horse, and ask him if he enjoyed the jape.

He didn’t.  
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“I think I would like to be a knight. Like the ones in the songs.”

She said this as she lounged lazily on the bed, pale legs propped up against the headboard, hair a dark pool around her face.

“A knight?” he asked with mild disinterest, eyes still reading the letter that detailed her brother and father’s deaths. He had lived with Lyanna Stark about two moon’s turns, and she proved to be a very talkative creature. She was receptive to his advances, however, as he knew she would be (why else did he write her all those letters?), and it made for good progress. She was fine between the sheets, he supposed. A submissive creature too, thank the gods.

“Yes, a knight,” she repeated, smiling serenely. He had not told of her the letter’s contents. Nor did he intend to. As her eyes faced skyward, he took the corner of it to the candle flame. “The sort that save people.”

“Who would you like to save? Children?” he asked just to humor her, eyes watching the paper’s edge curl at the bite of the fire.

“Maidens, of course,” she answered back as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. The absurdity of the reply promoted him to look to her with mild surprise. She was sitting up now, eyes looking off dreamily into the distance. “I’d like to save maidens from bears and horrible men.”

“For what reward?” In the songs, every knight was rewarded by his lady, either through love, or marriage, or a promise of a second meeting. Lyanna was a lady, however; what could another lady give her?

“A kiss,” she answered breathily, eyes now focused on her bare knees. “I think it would be nice to be kissed by a maiden.”

Rhaegar did not respond. He only looked to the solemn girl with his brows raised in amusement at her silly response. But this was no jape; there was a hardness in her light eyes that indicated that she was entirely serious.

His shock remained so long that the fire of the candle bit his fingers, the ashes of the paper haven already fallen into the candleholder. He brought the two burnt fingers to his mouth and sucked, staring at Lyanna Stark with genuine interest for the first time.

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“So she is dead?” Elia asks with an arch of her brows.

Rhaegar nods numbly. “She died in childbed.”

His wife lowers her eyes, her lips parting as she mulled the thought over. Then her dark eyes meet his again, a fire behind them. “The poor girl,” she laments with a cluck of her tongue. “Poor, poor girl. She was but a girl, wasn’t she?”

Rhaegar knew what she was doing, and knew what he needed to do in order to avoid the trap, but he does not do it. He only meets her eye soundlessly.

“Sixteen,” Elia murmurs Lyanna’s tender age. “And she shall never see her son.” She closes the gap between them, putting her hand on his arm. Her touch was soft, but her voice was not. Her voice was steel, her eyes daggers, her lips red as blood. “Her brother shall be crushed.”

Rhaegar breaks their gaze, looking out the window instead. He did not want to think of Eddard Stark, for to think of a Stark was to think of her. Thinking of her brought guilt; guilt for the fifteen year old he had stolen away, the one he made love to like a woman when she was but a girl, the one who died in a bed of blood and returned to him purple and bloated. Her family went to war for her, where two have perished in the task and one currently rotted in a black cell. A day had passed since his arrival and Rhaegar had not seen the son she bore him, nor did he name him. The child slept in a nursery he had yet to enter.

Elia did not say it in so many words, but she had placed all blame on him. And perhaps she was right; perhaps this was all his fault.

“Are you asking me to free him without punishment?” he asks Elia without emotion. He did not want his first act as king to be an act of total mercy; not when Lyanna was not here to convince him.

Elia shrugs. “You may strip him of titles and lands and banish him to the Night’s Watch,” she said plainly. “Let his wife and son return to the Riverlands disgraced, if you choose to spare Lord Tully the same punishment. Or you may take his son as a ward and have him return North without a child. If that does not please you then you may execute him, of course.”

Rhaegar nearly shivers. To kill the man whose sister he had indirectly killed— that seemed too bold.

“They did not rebel against me. They rebelled against my father,” Rhaegar assures himself, finding an excuse to avoid cruelty.

“Oh?” Elia asks with an airy chuckle. “Then Lyanna’s eldest brother stormed the Red Keep for your _father’s_ head? I must have understood that wrong.”

Rhaegar winces at the coldness of her voice. She is angry with him still, this much was obvious, but she was mocking him also. He feared this would only continue, though he wished it wouldn’t. Now that Lyanna was gone, he had to turn to Elia for advice once again. Perhaps he ought to turn for forgiveness also.

Rhaegar went to his knees, looking up at her as he held the hem of her skirt. He leaned down and kissed the red silk, then kneeled upright again.

“I cannot do this alone, Elia,” he murmurs to her with a voice that threatened to break. “I have done much to give you cause to hate me, but I beg that you help me now.”

She looked down at him coldly, arms crossed guarded over her chest, for only a moment longer before she softened. Elia could be hard and rough like a uncut jewel, but she was kind at heart. He felt the warmth in her now, along with her sweetness and charm. It was not in her nature to hate, making her so much unlike her vengeful younger brother, and she preferred to love. Elia did not love him; she would never love him, but she was fond of him as he was of her.

She was still the mother of his children, and he the father, and as long as that remained true, the pair would remain in peace.

“Things have changed, Rhaegar,” his wife sighs, her black eyes glassy. “You left us. You cannot expect forgiveness now, when it is so soon.”

“I know,” Rhaegar returned forlornly.

“Though perhaps I am fortunate. I lived, while a girl younger than me has died.” She admitted this with a delicately sorrowful lilt to her voice. Rhaegar caught it quickly, as he was able to sense these little changes again with more ease since his return. He used to noticed even quicker than this before the war, but that was a year ago. He had to relearn.

But he did notice that she spoke of Lyanna was a measure of sympathy, and perhaps pity. There was no hate in her voice.

“Do you hate her?” he asked her, still kneeling and searching her eyes.

Elia smiled. “I cannot hate her. Her love was no sin, and yet she paid for it all the same.”

“If she were alive, would you hate her?”

“I cannot hate her,” Elia repeats.

Rhaegar understands. Again, she placed the blame on him. It was not Lyanna’s fault for falling in love; it was his fault for taking advantage of it.

And now she was a cold corpse in a sept flooded with light, floors above where her brother sat in darkness.

Rhaegar stands then holds her chin to kiss her; Elia turns her cheek, refusing him. “It is too soon,” she says softly, then turns and walks away from him. Rhaegar cannot help but compare now, wondering if Lyanna would have refused him so. She might have, if he did not do her bidding.

 _”Come back to me,”_ her voice calls to him again, her breath sated and light.

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War raged on outside of the tower’s walls, but Rhaegar had made sure that Lyanna was none the wiser. She asked often of news of her family, and Rhaegar always responded the same: “They are searching still, my lady. They haven’t given up yet.”

While she always seemed relieved at this false news, she always begged him to write them and tell them that she is well and safe. So they would not worry anymore, she said. So they would not mourn her.

He always said he would if he remembered.

These were all lies he had to tell to keep Lyanna loyal to him, and of sound mind. He could not have her be hysterical with sorrow when she carried his child, or gods knew what that would do to the babe. He thought of Elia and her frailty, and wished to keep such a fate from this small woman.

He watched her as she undid the laces of her trousers, tugging them down her pale legs, which were toned from riding. She tossed those onto a chair, then unfastened the buttons on her blouse and threw that too, leaving her in nothing but her chemise and smallclothes. She then sauntered over to the vanity, sitting her shapely rump down onto the seat, and grabbed the wooden brush sitting there. She took the bristles from the top of her scalp to the very tips of her long, dark hair, one, two, three times. Then she set the brush down and stood again, walking to the bed, climbing atop it with her hands and knees before collapsing on top of the sheets.

Then she gave a long, doleful sigh.

Rhaegar rose to join her on the bed, shedding his blouse as he loomed over her on his knees. She held his gaze firmly, boldly reaching out a hand to touch his hard stomach, trailing her fingertips down his skin and to the waist of his trousers. Then with unpracticed fingers, she undid the laces and reached inside.

“Careful,” he warned as a fingernail grazed over his length. He leaned down to give her better reach, supporting his weight with a hand by her shoulder. He pressed kisses where it was most accessible, at her jaw and neck, moving his mouth over the hill of her freckled nose and down to the valley between her lips. When he wished to be inside her, he tugged her hand from his trousers, pressing her wrist down into the pillows beside her head.

His fingers hooked on the waist of her small clothes, bringing them down to her ankles in one sharp tug. He shifted on top of her so that he was flush with her body, then spread her legs with a gentle hand, holding her knee as he hooked her leg over his hips.

She dug the heel of her free hand into his chest, then whined, but not out of pleasure. He paused, looking down to her with mild irritation to see her pouting.

“Touch me,” she whispered, moving the hand from her knee to in between her legs. “Touch me.”

She had never requested this of him before, nor did he ever do it but for the first time. She was always wet for him; she was wet for him now, but she asked to be touched. He did not ask why, but he did not move his fingers either.

“Touch me, please,” she begged softly. “The babe would be happy if you touched me.”

_The babe?_

Rhaegar searched her eyes to see that she spoke true. His fingers worked on her, extracting from her gasping moans. What he found strange, however, was that her pleasure increased his. He did not think of his seed taking root inside her, or that he ought to enter her as soon as possible to quicken the process, but that he wanted to please her, wished to please her.

His seed trickled down her thigh that night, and he smiled when she moaned his name.

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Rhaegar takes a torch and Ser Gerold down into the black cells. He did not take Ser Arthur, who was usually at his side, as Rhaegar was still angry with him. It was not the cruel, red anger from before, but it was still there. Granted, the blame could be spread to sers Gerold and Oswell too, but it was Arthur who had planned the revenge.

They followed the keeper of the dungeons down to the black cells, his many keys rattling as he did so. The stench grew greater the farther they descended, due to the years of shit and piss that had festered within these damp walls. Rhaegar had to cover his nose until the scent accommodated, but even then it felt stuck to the inside of his nostrils.

The keeper stops in front of a cell, then raises a key. “Shall I open it, your grace?” he asked in a gravelly voice, face hidden from him beneath the robe.

“No,” Rhaegar responded. He took a step forward, bringing the torch in front of him. “You two may leave me now.”

As they backed away, Eddard Stark stepped forward. The rags he wore were filthy with dirt and filth, and streaks of dirt marred his face. Rhaegar had remembered seeing him years ago at Harrenhal, but this was not the same boy. This was a man, with broad shoulders and thick muscle, a warrior, and a true lord. There was pride shining in his dark grey eyes even now, even when he stood before his king in filthy garments.

 _”We Starks have a certain pride,”_ Lyanna’s voice whispered in his head.

“Lord Stark,” Rhaegar greeted him with a nod.

Eddard’s face remained stoic. “Your grace.”

“I have not yet decided on your fate or that of your allies’,” Rhaegar clarifies from now, so as to not heighten his hopes. “But I felt that I must inform you of something grave.”

The young lord met his eye still, looking hard and firm, like a giant rock that would not be moved by anything. Rhaegar found that odd that he did, when one might think that submissiveness would make a sovereign more keen to mercy. But Eddard Stark had already lost much; to lose mercy too would be a small loss.

“Your sister, Lord Stark, died in Dorne,” Rhaegar tells this to him with the slightest break in his voice. It was still something he preferred not to remember, something he did not lot to think of, not when he had spent sleepless nights yearning for her.

Eddard Stark also wavers. His solemn face fell into a mournful mask, and his lip trembled when he spoke. “H-How?” he asked thinly.

“She died birthing me a son,” Rhaegar admits almost shamefaced. It was his fault, as Elia implied.

Lord Stark falls to his knees, his rocky facade crumbling around him. For seconds, he looks down at his hands, unturned on his legs, just staring, staring. He makes a choking sound, then looks up to him with glassy eyes. “Alone?” was the question he asked, just that single word. “Did she die alone?” he added after a heavy pause.

“There was a maester,” he informed him tentatively, knowing very well this was not what he meant. _Did she die without someone she loved?_ That was what he meant.

“Gods,” the young lord chokes out, turning his hands into fists that balled up the cloth of his trousers. “She always feared that… being alone was… by the gods, I-“ Another pained sound rips from his throat, but they were not sobs. It was only agony that wracked him now, regret even, but not shoulder-shaking sorrow. Rhaegar thinks he would not show such a weakness to a king.

Rhaegar kneels to reach his level, moving the torch a ways away from Eddard’s face so that he had darkness for privacy. He nearly wished to grieve with him, to admit that he loved her most ardently, and that she would receive the greatest of treatment in her passage to the gods. Looking down to the Stark before him stirred such tender feelings, it seemed. Stranger still was to think that Eddard Stark would have been his goodbrother, had fate not been so cruel.

Eddard Stark’s noises quiet soon, and he raises his head to meet Rhaegar’s eye again. The sorrow reflected in them frightened him; it was raw, wild, unabashed, and it looked too much like her.

“Where is her body?” he asks gruffly, his agony lending roughness to his voice.

“Here, in the Great Sept,” Rhaegar responded. “She has been prepared by the Silent Sisters already. I have a tomb for her to be lowered in.” One here, in his own sept, where she would never be too far.

“No,” Eddard denies him swiftly, adamantly. “I must take her north.”

Rhaegar furrows his brows. “Everything has been prepared here.”

“She is a Stark, your grace. She belongs in the crypts of Winterfell.”

 _”We Starks have a certain pride,"_ Lyanna reminded him.

“She belongs beside her brother,” Eddard continues rather passionately, his voice gradually growing louder and louder. “She loved Brandon; it is what she would have wanted.”

Rhaegar wanted to deny it, say that is was not what she had wanted, but he could not do so without telling another lie. He had already told so many; he thinks the gods would destroy him should he tell another. But it not only fear of the gods that keeps him from protesting. It is the truth of the matter. Lyanna was a Stark, proud of her name and home, a daughter of snow and endless winters. She had been Winterfell’s only daughter, and like the Stark maid of Bael the Bard’s legend, she disappeared and made her father daughterless.

In a moment of weakness, Rhaegar thinks of Rhaenys, of the pain he would feel if she had vanished into the wind with no sign of departure or return. His daughter was but five years old and innocent, but should she run from him, he thinks he would go mad until she returned. Even death would have been more of an easy partner than plain disappearance.

“You may take her bones north,” Rhaegar rasped, seeing no other alternative. “Though it is a long distance—“

“There is no distance I would not cross for her, your grace.”

“Her body is heavy with the effects of death,” Rhaegar returned, remembering carrying her limp body on the steps.

“My sister never held any weight in my arms.”

Rhaegar goes silent, unable to argue any longer. He suddenly recalls her speaking of how he reminded her of her brother, the solemn one she called Ned. He sees a little of it now.

The man in rags rises to his feet, and Rhaegar follows. He seemed ready to back away into the darkness, already half turned to do so, but he pauses, looking down to the filthy straw.

“Did she love you? Truly?” he asked in a hesitant whisper, as if he feared that the answer would hurt him.

Rhaegar reflects on this briefly, unable to answer quickly. “I think she did,” he responded with the slightest smile. If it were not love, then it was kinship, at the very least.

“Even after Brandon? Even with the war?”

Rhaegar wishes he did not ask such a thing; there was that old rawness in those Stark eyes that pushed him to further weakness, further truth.

“I never told her about your kins' deaths. Nor did I speak of the war.”

Eddard Stark looks shocked, his eyes widening in the dim light. Rhaegar wants to look away, but he cannot, stuck to watching the young lord pin him with an accusing stare. In the moment, Rhaegar felt as if their spots had switched, and it was Eddard looking into Rhaegar’s dark cell, judging him for his sin.

“I did not want to hurt her,” Rhaegar admits sheepishly, foolishly.

Eddard Stark only shakes his head. “She has already met him in death, I’m sure,” he says largely to himself, voice hardly above a whisper. “She is with him.” Then he raised his gaze, taking notice of Rhaegar again. “Did you love her?” he asks with a shred of hope, a bit of happiness in this bleak situation.

Rhaegar takes a ragged breath, then looks off to the side, where black steps led up into the light. “I think so,” he admits uneasily. “However unintentionally. She snuck up on me, it seems.”

Then Eddard did something strange: he chuckled. “She does that,” he said before slipping back into the darkness of his cell.

Rhaegar climbs the steps to where Ser Gerold and the keeper waited, his footsteps echoing throughout the barren dungeons. When he reached the top, he turned to the bowed keeper. “Move Lord Stark to a better cell. Fetch him clean clothes and food from the kitchens,” he commands him. “I think he’s done his penance in the black cells.”

“As you wish, your grace.”

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She was three moons pregnant with his babe, her belly still flat as a plain, when she held black rose petals in her hands and began to sob.

Rhaegar had sent for those blue roses she so loved, the ones that had been in her crown, for moons now. The North, despite its current war, was still eager to sell such frivolities, it seemed. The shipments of winter rose seeds pleased Lyanna, and she would move them to flower boxes by the window to have them soak up the sun. She watered them, watched them, sang to them, talked to them, and all she asked in return was that they did not wilt.

They always did. These might have been the third set of roses to turn from the color of the sky to pitch. She had taken the other two losses well, only asking him to order more, and he did her bidding willingly. But this set seemed to have touched her, and crushed her.

She held the black petals between her fingers and cried, fat tears rolling down her cheeks to her upturned palm below. Rhaegar had, at first, been shocked to immobility to see her react so violently to something so expendable. When his wits returned to him, he walked over to her, putting a tentative hand on the small of her back, and asked why she cried.

“Why won’t they live?” she asked savagely, hiccuping from the ferocity of her reaction. “They die, they always die. Why? Why?”

“Perhaps they are not suited to the southron sun,” Rhaegar offered, rubbing her shaking back in small circles. This did not abate her mourning; she continued to cry, her sobbing turning into wails as her hands curled into fists. “We can get more, Lya.”

“Are they alright?” she asked suddenly between sniffles.

“The roses?”

“My brothers.”

Rhaegar took pause at this. How did he respond? Did he tell her that one had died alongside his father, and the other was in the heat of battle, on the verge of dying on any moment in time? He would not.

“They are fine,” Rhaegar assured her with a small smile.

“Are you sure?” she persisted, lip quivering as she looked up at him with wide, red eyes. “I cannot explain it, Rhaegar, but for the past few moons I have been filled with fear. I dream of Brandon and wake up with a pain in my heart. Rhaegar, I-“ She burst into tears anew. Rhaegar drew her to his chest so she may sob into it, not caring that she wet it.

“It is the babe that brings you unease, my love, that is all.”

She sobbed a little longer into his chest before growing quiet. She pulled away from him, her gaze turned back to the blackened roses in their clay flowerpots.

“I don’t want them to die,” she said softly.

“The flowers can be grown again,” he reassured her. She then turned to look at him with an empty gaze that said that she did not mean the flowers.

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Rhaegar looks down to his son kicking his legs in his crib. His eyes were wide open now, holding his gaze with intelligent dark grey orbs. He had been unnamed for almost a week since his arrival, and in that time Rhaegar did not see him once. This was the first time he stepped into his nursery, having finally grown bold enough to do so.

His child had pale white skin and rosy cheeks, his dark hair contrasting strongly with the pastel tones. He was dressed in princely attire: a puffy cream blouse, black trousers, and a red vest. Targaryen colors for a child who looked nothing of the sort.

His child gurgled excitedly as Rhaegar looked at him, opening his mouth in joy when he reached a hand to touch his soft cheek. He turned his head too, catching his finger in his mouth, sucking softly on it as he search for milk. Upon finding none, he whined softly, frowning ever so slightly.

The nurse told him that he was a wonderful child. Quiet even in his cries, gentle in his suckling, and not at all averse to strangers. The Queen Elia had come to see him daily, she told him. Elia did not tell Rhaegar this; he would ask her later.

Rhaegar reached down, picking up his small son with forced gentleness. The child kicked his legs in glee as he did, gurgling in the crook of his arm. It nearly pained Rhaegar to look at him, the spitting image of his dead mother, of the woman he killed coming out of her. Rhaegar shook the thought away; the child was not to blame for Lyanna’s death. That was Rhaegar’s doing.

He takes him out of his chambers and to his solar, holding him to his chest as he gurgled and cooed. Rhaegar lowered himself slowly into his chair, a hand on the babe’s belly to brace him. The child immediately nestle into his chest, mouth open and searching for a teat. His lips made smacking noises as he did this. The child eventually gave up again, reverting to little grunts as he look up in disappointment at his teat-less father.

Rhaegar traced a finger from his vest, dragging it down his arm to his small hand. Little fingers immediately wrapped around his large one, gripping him with as much might as a child his size could muster.

“I wonder if you know you are motherless,” he found himself speaking to the child. “I wonder if you care.” The child met his gaze with raised brows, a mature intensity growing in his dark eyes. It was almost as if he understood, and was responding to him. _I know,_ the child said. _I know._

The door to the solar opened as Rhaegar raised his son’s little fingers to his lips. He looked up to see Jon Connington, the new Hand of the King, looking to him with his usual gruffness.

“Have you your decisions for the trials tomorrow?” Jon asked succinctly, always one for getting straight to the point.

“Yes,” Rhaegar answered passively, his eyes fixed back to his son still holding his finger and staring at him. He really was a quiet babe. He wondered if that were a Stark trait or Targaryen trait.

“Well?” Jon Connington came closer, ignoring that the king was lost in his sons eyes.

The boy was all Stark, there was no doubt about that. His mother would have been happy for that, likely to boast about it as if it were a crowning achievement. A little wolf pup for his wolf mother.

“Jon,” Rhaegar called dreamily, raising his son so that they were face to face, nose to nose. The child gurgled, but did not break his gaze. “Your name has its roots in the North does it not?”

“I suppose,” Jon answered in a grunt. “About tomorrow—“

“Hush, Jon,” Rhaegar scolded softly, so as not to frighten the babe. Jon was being too loud.

Rhaegar noticed that his child smelled sweet, as all children were wont to be. Rhaegar pressed a kiss to his smooth forehead, then lowered him back in his arms, covering that tiny hand with his own.

“Would you be against my naming him after you?” Rhaegar asked his friend, finally breaking his gaze with the child to look to his disgruntled Hand.

Jon blinked twice, surprised. “I would not, your grace. It would be an honor—“

“Good,” Rhaegar cut him off, satisfied. “Then he shall be Prince Jon Targaryen, first of his name. Go fetch the jeweler for me; I wish to have him fitted for a circlet.”

Jon sputtered, his face turned as red as his hair as he was sent to do a servant’s errand. But he did fly to do it, after a respectful bow and plenty of grumbling.

“Jon,” Rhaegar whispered to his son, who kicked his legs at his mention. “Your mother would have liked that.”

 _I hope so,_ the intelligent child seemed to say in his soft little smile. _I hope._


End file.
